Unique for iPad vs XPad

“Unique sounds like syrup with dirt kicked into it. If Bootsy Collins, Roger Troutman and Daft Punk would have met up in Studio 54 to create a soft-synth, for sure something like Unique would have come out of it…” Sound & Recording Mag Unique was made for fun and vibes: Analogue sound, intense modulation and a killer set of features, delivering an amazing sonic spectrum that’s full of character: Classy sounds, powerful, warm… sometimes gritty. Each of the 2 oscillators offers a selection of 5 waveforms: sawtooth and pulse waves are here, along with noise, triple saw and triple FM waves. There's also an additional sub-oscillator strapped into the master section for added oomph. The internal controllers will bring in the dynamics: an LFO and an envelope, there's a recordable XY field & a sequencer. Use these to modulate any knob – a simple long tap will do. The sound springs to life when it hits the filter section. Needless to say, analogue high-pass, low-pass and band-pass varieties are in place, along with a comb filter. Standards aside, the actual intention behind this project, the Vowel Filter, also became its outstanding feature: string together two or four vowel formants and play them back in a multitude of ways. Once you’ve built your sound, there’s tons of sound polish in two chained multi-effect units. Features • Sawtooth, Triple Saw, Pulse, Triple FM, Noise with tonal Filter, Sub Sine • 5 Filters with 5 Modulators each • Duophone Arpeggiator • Vowel Filter • Two Effect Sections • Ableton Link Kit • MIDI Learn & Host Automation • 300 groovy presets by various artists

XPad is a professional sound module app and Audio Unit v3 plugin with focus on modern pad sounds for iPad. Goal was to get the warm and vibrant sound of analogue synths onto the convenient platform of an iPad and combining those sounds with the benefits of state of the art digital features while still preserving that analogue tone and feeling. Glissando XPad introduces a new way that we were developing for our apps to achieve realistic large interval Glissando. You can glide a tone continuously e.g. from the lowest octave up to the highest octave and vice versa, in any desirable speed and without causing an artificial impression to the listener. We were also thinking about how to improve the usability aspects for playing Glissando in a much more intuitive & convenient way for a keyboard player, while still preserving the player's full control. Foremost this app allows you to mix Glissando with regular polyphonic notes (e.g. chords) simultaneously or switch between these playing styles quickly at any time without leaving your hands off the keyboard. For instance you might be playing and holding a chord with your right hand while playing a Glissando slide with your left hand and punching through the right hand's chord from an octave lower than the chord, up to some octave higher than the chord. Tone Width Replicating some analogue boutique pad synthesizers is nice, but what about having a huge stack of them? That's where "Tone Width" control comes into play. Especially the important pad sounds of this app allow you to morph the sound with the "Tone Width" knob in real-time steplessly between a very thin and clean sound up to a huge and fat tonal sound as if an army of pad synths was working under your finger tips. Sensible Control Controls for the individual sound aspects is good. But it should be in a sensible way. Nothing is hard wired here. Every sound of this app presents controls that make sense for the individual sound. All controls presented are always fine tuned to the individual elements of that sound. You can alter all controls remotely by MIDI e.g. with sliders at your keyboard. The most important controls for each sound are mapped to things that you are most likely using anyway at your keyboard. For instance all sounds use the Aftertouch information of your keyboard to bring more dynamic behaviour into the sound even while just holding some notes. And just grab your modulation wheel at your keyboard to bring in some more variance. Never Lost XPad offers up to 462 sounds, but don't worry, it never lets you down and always assists you finding just the sound you need in a glimpse. You can quickly search for sounds with any combination of several criteria like sound characteristics, articulations, controls and more. Connectivity Like all our apps, XPad is very easy to use and start with. Just connect your keyboard with your iPad and you are ready to go. And of course if needed, you can simply tweak the setup, e.g. use a Bluetooth MIDI wireless connection to your keyboard instead of a cabled one, restrict MIDI input to certain devices or apps, connect to other apps with Inter-App Audio or use the sounds of this app as Audio Unit v3 plugin directly in the DAW app of your choice. Recorder The app comes with a built-in MIDI recorder that allows you to quickly record your musical ideas. You can share them as audio files with other people or transfer them as MIDI files for further work e.g. on your Mac. Sound Sets XPad is divided into 14 optional sound sets of different sound categories and provide up to 462 sounds in total. Even though the app is focused on pad sounds, this is not all this app has to offer sound-wise. The "Atmo" pack for instance contains atmospheric sounds for generating very emotional sound bases and backgrounds e.g. for film and entertainment. The "Perc" sound set contains drums and percussive sounds. The "Silicon" sound set covers synthesizers also offside the pad field, and much more.